#also i have to say her bit in the votdt movie about wanting to look prettier like susan actually really hit me since i've been fighting off

[rainintheevening]

Chronicles of Narnia 30 Day Challenge — Day 11

What character would you say you are most like?

Okay, that's a hard question to answer, because I'm really torn between Peter and Lucy, particularly movie Peter, but at the core of me, I think I have to go with Lucy.

According to one assessment, we're both ENFP, and she was always the one I felt closest to from reading the books. Dreamer, believer, wonderer, but with plenty of any girl's fears and concerns. She's brave, even a bit foolhardy in things like trusting Mr. Tumnus, and she has a huge heart that she wears on her sleeve.

I'm pretty sure I am her, but a more battered, doubtful, tired, eldest-sibling version, hence my identifying so hard with Peter in the Prince Caspian movie. I want to be Lucy again. But with all the wisdom from the last 15 years to temper it.

[lord-of-christmas-lights]

I could post regular Narnia headcanons...

Or I could post the continuation of this post and go into depth about how Eustace and Caspian are affected by deity Narnia. Welcome back to Inhuman Narnia 101 and it turned out just as long as the first one so buckle up.

Check out this post by @dorianviolet for another awesome version of Inhuman AU Caspian

Warnings for slight body horror mentions including blood magic stuff, slight religious themes and theological discussion towards the end.

Before anything: This AU directly contradicts canon a lot. I don't care, that's why it's called an AU. Some of it is deliberate, some of it is accidental. I haven't read the books in a number of years, so this is all based on the movies and general information I've picked up from fanfic and tumblr. Discussion on this post is welcomed, criticism and arguments are not. Thank you.

First off, here is the link to an exploration of Dragoning, the Eustace-centric fic I wrote about this. I refer to it repeatedly in this post so if you want the full thing, there it is.

Second, let's get into this. So in my last post, I talked a lot about Narnia, her general existence in this AU, and her motivations as a character. She wants the people in her world to be a part of her, and no one else. Some of this is a conscious choice, and some of it isn't. Eustace's changes throughout his time in VOTDT are definitely not purposeful. It was his greed that drove him to the treasure, it was his own "curse" in becoming a dragon. That was not Narnia reaching out to him and purposefully trying to mold him to her world. As such, he takes on more of an observing role.

Eustace doesn't ever actually directly address his cousins on the subject of their inhumanity, in this fic or in any other I write. He simply sees it, notes it happening, and moves on. Even in the sections in my fics where the subject of inhumanity in general is brought up between Eustace and one of his cousins, it's always about Caspian, the greater Narnian world, or himself.

"Eustace asks why, and Lucy answers. Narnia changes people, she says. It happens to everyone, but the closer you are to her Heart, the greater it is. I don't know where Dragons are. Perhaps closer than we realized. It's exhilarating, isn't it? Aslan will return us to normal though, at the end of our journey." - AEOD

I don't know why, but I don't like the idea of Eustace trying to directly address the Pevensie brand of inhumanity. That line above takes place after his UnDragoning, after the way he sees things has changed, and I see it as him asking what exactly has changed, you know, why are Dragons different than boys?

That brings me to how Eustace himself changes. Now, if he hadn't gone and turned into a Dragon, I imagine Narnia wouldn't have taken much note of him. He's a random human, stuck-up, not at all in line for ruling her lands, and just kind of exists without much else going on. She still would have affected him a little, as she does to all humans in her world but it would have been almost entirely spiritual with no physical changes. And then we got the greatest fuck around and find out scene ever. He becomes a Dragon.

I love dragons, always have, I have a very deep spiritual connection to these creatures, and as such, I have gone all out on worldbuilding for Narnian Dragons. Again, the quote from AEOD, "...the closer you are to her Heart, the greater it is. I don't know where Dragons are. Perhaps closer than we realized." In the Inhuman AU, Dragons were the first creatures Narnia (the deity) and Aslan made when they created Narnia (the world). They just really liked the dragon shape from other worlds and thought, "Hey wouldn't it be cool if our world was populated by these big fire-breathing lizards?" Now I don't actually remember how often Dragons are mentioned and/or featured in the books so I'm going with my idea that Dragons are a somewhat rare but not extinct species. They have to be created through magical means, often through physical transformation of people or objects, though there are a few known cases of natural-born Narnian Dragons. Eustace's creation was the curse on the treasure, though I don't see his Dragoning as a curse itself. As in, the curse isn't in the being a Dragon, it's in how the Dragon was created. So, Eustace experiences this accidental change into a creature that's closer to Narnia's Heart than pretty much any other being in Narnia. They were her first creations, forged from the fire in the Stars, and they are the closest to her magic. And that gets her attention.

Now, if you went and read AEOD, you'll have noticed that one of Eustace's biggest changes (aside from the obvious physical ones) is his vision. This is just a natural thing for Dragons, they are far more in tune with magic and the earth and everything than everyone else, but Narnia's special interest in him definitely amplifies the hell out of his magic sense.

"The people here say dragons see the oddest of things, and he has to assume it's a hallucination....He refuses to give into its whims, reminds himself it's just his imagination. Until Reepicheep comments on it." - AEOD. Following this quote, Reepicheep mentions to Lucy that her inhumanity is returning faster than Edmund's and Eustace has a total panic attack at the idea that what he's seeing is real. He sees what everyone else does, Lucy's stained fingers and Edmund's ability to manipulate words, but he also notices stuff no one else does like the stars in Edmund's throat and the echoes that follow Lucy's words. This is further cemented after his UnDragoning, where the extra stuff he perceived has vanished. Now the general idea in this AU is that the closer to Narnia's Heart you are, the more you know and perceive. Everyone can see some of the more obvious inhuman aspects of the Pevensies, but there are things that only Dragons, druids, Stars, and some other magic folk really close to Narnia's Heart see. I'm not going to get into an exact chart of what certain characters can and cannot see because that can change over time and such and I'd rather leave it mostly up to personal interpretation on what other characters do and do not perceive about the Pevensies and other such inhuman characters.

(Side note—I had to pause in the writing of this post here to go to my second meeting for an autism assessment and I think if I just showed the doctor my notes app and the inhuman/dark fantasy narnia tag on my blog, I'd get the diagnosis instantly lol) So anyways, Narnia senses Eustace becoming a Dragon and is like "Ooohoo what's this?" and starts sort of digging into him in the same way she does to her Kings and Queens. This triggers his already enhanced perception of Narnia (the world) to get even stronger, and this is when he starts seeing stuff like people's souls, Caspian's second heart (more on that soon), and looking at Lucy/Edmund/Lilliandil becomes almost painful because Narnia's magic is so bright in them. Aslan then UnDragons him, which Narnia really doesn't like btw, and Eustace is back to being a fairly average human.

This is where stuff established in AEOD ends.

Now I have so many ideas and half finished fanfics written out in my notes app about Eustace, UnDragoning, and inhumanity and it would be impossible to cover them all here, so I'm just going to go with the highlights. One of my favorite ones is the idea that after Eustace's UnDragoning, he still feels very connected to being a dragon. He's had this taste of pure inhumanity, and something like that doesn't just leave a person. There's a fic I read once long before I was fully invested in this fandom about Eustace and draconity that I will never stop thinking about and was actually the reason I started considering Eustace and Narnian Dragons in this AU. One of the really important things to note is that once a Dragon is created, they can never be uncreated. They can be UnDragoned, where their physical form is returned to whatever it was before their Dragoning (a rock, a talisman, a faun, etc) but their soul has changed on a fundamental level to that of a Dragon. Now for Eustace in my Inhuman AU, this manifests spiritually as a deep longing to return to being a Dragon. Physically, he experiences fun side effects like increased heat tolerance, nails that grow faster than normal, and because Narnia likes to meddle, a single ridge of scales along his spine. In some versions of my drafts, he stays at the end of VOTDT and experiences a slow Dragoning because Narnia's influence on him is that strong, other versions he stays but never quite returns to the Dragon he was before, and in yet other versions, he returns to England and loses that connection enough that physically, he will never be a Dragon again. As I said, Narnia is fascinated by him, she's never really had a human Dragon before, but he is still just a random guy who happens to be related to the Pevensies and as such, she doesn't invest as much time or magic into his inhumanity.

So that's Eustace. This is already such a long post but I promised to talk about both him and Caspian so here we go.

Now, in my last post I talked a bit about how Narnia (the deity) affects the other humans in Narnia (the world) to an extent, but it's nowhere near the amount she does to her Kings and Queens, and also this diminishes more and more the farther you get from Narnia (the country). Telmar is fairly close to Narnia (the country) but as we see in PC, a lot of Narnia's magic and spirit has been diminished by the time Caspian is born. Up until the awakening of the land during the battle, Caspian is essentially 100% human. However, this changes very quickly.

It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment Caspian becomes a King of Narnia. Is it when he refuses to kill Miraz? Is it when Aslan tells him he's one? Is it during his actual coronation? Yes, yes, and yes. I try not to pin it down to an exact moment. By the end of PC though, he's definitely noticing some changes in himself. I have an unpublished part 2 to an exploration of Inhumanity (my only other actually posted fic on this stuff) that I swear I will clean up and get posted soon that goes into further detail on the changes he's noticing at the end of AEOI. Some of the big ones include a second golden heart, seeing some of the life magic in the world around him, and a golden glow on his palms. He also slowly develops the ability to heal, though it's not always consistent. Magic takes practice, lots and lots of practice. In pt 2, the glow on his palms has gotten so bright and also spread around his head like a halo, and Lucy shows him how to conceal it so he's not impossible to look at, but because of Magic™ there's still a dusting of golden powdery stuff across his skin. His blood turns golden because Ben Barnes + golden blood is such pretty imagery, and like the others, it gets sucked down and absorbed into Narnia's Heart when he bleeds in battle. Also when I say he's got a second heart I mean he's got a second fucking heart. Ribcage shift and all. (His appearance doesn't actually change, it's more like a pocket dimension thing going on inside him, but he sure as hell can feel it happening). Having Narnia as a patron goddess just means you have to put up with a second puberty sometimes lol.

Anyways, there's a line in AEOI that I feel explains this stuff really well. "He cannot truly protect the land without becoming a part of it himself." Narnia changes her Kings and Queens because she wants them to be a part of her. Aslan doesn't really see these changes as necessary (in canon, a world without deity Narnia, they don't happen), and if the storyline we pick is the one that's the constant cycle of humanity and inhumanity, it's sort of a push and pull between them. Aslan wants the Pevensies, and by proxy anyone else who rules Narnia or experiences these changes, to keep their humanity, to stay as they were Created by him. Narnia, however, wants them to be as much a part of her as she is of them. It's very clear in both the books and the movies that Narnia (the world) is where these characters belong. In the end, they all come home to her (yes, Susan too because fuck Mr. Clive Staples Lewis). Caspian being anything less than fully inhuman is something she cannot handle. She is constantly having to recreate the Pevensies, reestablish her hold on them, only to have them return to England and become mostly human again. Caspian cannot be taken away from her, he is in this world by birth and she is going to do everything she can to shape him into the ruler he needs to be.

Once again, I would like to state that Aslan and Narnia are not opposing sides of good and evil. Gods cannot be defined by human standards, and to think either Narnia or Aslan completely in the right or wrong in this AU would be, well, an interesting standpoint, but really not the one I'm going for here. I'm not going to say it's a misinterpretation, I am very open to hearing people's thoughts on this AU, and everyone's going to see things differently. Just, please reread what I've written about them before you start making that argument.

Anyways, that wraps this post up because I have spent the better part of the past 6 hours writing this. I spent way more time on Eustace than I intended but it's just so fascinating to think about inhumanity from his perspective considering he's the only one in canon that actually was (briefly) inhuman. Again, if you got this far, congratulations! If you use any of my ideas mentioned here, please tag me, I am so starved for inhuman Narnia content lol.

[narniaandplowmen]

This is one of the most interesting entries in the Chronicles of Narnia, if you ask me, together with The Last Battle. I cannot quite get my finger on why, but it seems to stand separate from the other six novels. That seems weird to say since the whole 'adventure directed by Aslan' thing is there in LWW, PC and, in bits and pieces, in VOTDT as well. It might be because this novel has the greatest amount of clear mistakes. Even before Eustace and the newly introduced Jill Pole enter Narnia, the story seems off to me. The whole 'summoning Aslan' is a weird thing, and the fact that Eustace even tells Jill about Narnia seems strange to me. With that, the story does not even start in Narnia. It starts in Aslan's land. Immediately, the first mistake happens, where Eustace falls down from the cliff. The entire adventure starts off on the wrong foot.

From there, it only gets worse, since they miss the First Sign. Trumpkin is too deaf to hear them, and they have to escape in the middle of the night, but they have to escape from those we got to know as 'the good guys'. From there, we meet Puddleglum, who, unlike most other Narnians is very negative and pessimistic. The trio that will go on this adventure is then complete, and it is quite the negative trio indeed. Jill and Eustace are, after all, known for complaining quite a bit. That is okay, but I clearly missed Lucy and her optimistic thoughts and endless faith, or Reepicheep, with his courage, bravery and sense of adventure. The adventure gets worse still, when they meet the Green Lady of the Kirtle encourages the crew to visit the Giants. They miss the Signs, completely forget about it.

However, do not misunderstand me and think I dislike this entry. I actually did quite enjoy it, though it has never been my favourite entry. I like it better now that I have just finished it, but this feeling will probably fade away again.

What I noticed quite quickly, which I did in VOTDT as well, is the distance that Eustace and Jill travel. They travel for many days, partly on Aslan's breath but also on their own. I love the number of days that they travel, it shows how immense the world that Lewis created is. Movies tend to compress the stories, which makes sense, but you forget the time that actually passes. And because the times are mentioned just in a few sentences, when you remember the stories you yourself also forget about the time the characters actually spend in Narnia. The time being mentioned gives the story such extra realism.

One of the other things I noticed was the true sense of symbolism in this novel. This becomes especially clear during the discussion Eustace, Jill, Rilian and Puddleglum have with the Witch, where she tries to convince the group that Narnia, that the Overlands, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars and Aslan do not exist. It seemed to me very similar to discussions we as Christians can often have with disbelievers. God cannot be real, there cannot be a Heaven, a world completely different from ours: how could there be? Arguing against these people seems futile, for each time they rationalise all you try to say. I dare say that Lewis intended this scene to be read this way (for as far as an author still has power over their work -- death of the author and all):

"And the lesson of it all is, your Highness," said the oldest Dwarf, "that those Northern Witches always mean the same thing, but in every age they have a different plan for getting it."

I found this line to be a sort of 'antagonist' to the "it never happens the same way twice" line. The Northern Witches want to take over Narnia, and with that, destroy those who live in it. Or, in 'our word'-terms: they try to take over Christian's faith and take away the life that resides in faith. With this in mind, my favourite quote is the one often cited in the fandom, and rightfully so:

I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia.

This line is also what makes Puddleglum my favourite character of this novel, together with, as always, Aslan. This line is the only thing you can keep hold of when in discussion with someone trying to rationalise your faith. It is such a beautiful line, and strangely hopeful. This 'real world' can suck sometimes, and honestly, it sucks most of the time. And even though many say that this is this real world and that this is everything there is, then I will choose to stay with my "play-world which licks your real world hollow".

This is also my favourite scene. I love the back and forth between the Witch and the group, how the group almost loses until Puddlegum, with all his bravery, stops out the fire, breaking the group free from the Witch's spell.

I also loved the parallels in temptation between King Caspian and his son. King Caspian wanted, so desperately, to visit Aslan's Land, but had to give that desire up in order to rule Narnia as a loyal and faithful king. And here, Prince Rilian looks into the depths of Bism and hearing the tales of this land and longs to go. I also love that Eustace wants to go, which sounded to me like a small throwback to the whole dragon-debacle. In the end, however, both Caspian and Rilian overcome temptation and become stronger because of it, they choose Narnia over everything else.

One other small detail I wanted to touch on was the Snow Dance! I would love to see this dance, it sounds so much fun and so pretty! I adore that snow is now celebrated in Narnia, so many years after the White Witch's rule.

Overall, I think I would give this novel 4 stars out of 5 (for I will be incapable of giving any novel not containing Reepicheep 5 stars). I liked it more than I thought I would, and I loved all the symbolism in this entry. I did not particularly like the negativity and quarrelling, but I do adore the powerful scene of the grew vs the Witch.

Also, I wonder what happened to all the other warriors out looking for Prince Rilian? That must have happened when he had only just disappeared. Were they cursed and set to work under the ground? Were they eaten by the giants? Did one of the rocks of the rock-throwing giants hit them? Did they just travel endlessly north, never realising Rilian lived underground now? Did the Witch kill them in her snake-form? I wonder...